What are these zombie processes doing?

phreak0ut · 17-03-2007, 08:50 PM

Recently found on my Open SuSE 10.2. Why is it zombied and what does this process do?

**kalpik** · 17-03-2007, 11:36 PM

Mono is .NET for linux.. Dunno about the zombied part though

Im sure google will help you

eddie · 19-03-2007, 12:36 AM

Zombie processes are left overs of dead processes. You can also call them as by-products that haven't been cleaned up by their buggy parent processes. Don't worry much about them as they are harmless. They do nothing...just stay in memory and take very little resources (in a few KBs). Most probably mono or some other package depending on mono has some bug and it will probably be fixed soon by openSUSE team.

phreak0ut · 21-03-2007, 10:57 AM

I've noticed this didn't happen before. Is it because of some dependencies which I might have installed recently??

Though few KBs, something is wrong with my GNOME, its taking a lot of time to boot up and the HD activitiy is almost constant. Hope its not because of this

eddie · 22-03-2007, 12:43 AM

That slow boot process and HD activity should not be because of these zombies. Try running htop in a terminal window and see which process is taking maximum RAM and which one is using maximum CPU. If some app is using too much CPU then it can effect other parts of the system.

phreak0ut · 22-03-2007, 07:35 AM

Ok, I'll try that. I wish to shutdown few services, which are not system related. Is there a way to identify and shut them down? I've made few processes low prioritized. Is shutting them down completely a better idea?

eddie · 23-03-2007, 01:02 AM

You can stop services from YaST. Open YaST, go to System and then "System services". There you can configure which services to start at boot time and which not to. YaST also provides small description of every service, so read and take very good care before you stop any service.

Stopping unneeded services is not a bad idea but an ill-informed system tweaking is a strict no no.

phreak0ut · 23-03-2007, 07:23 PM

^ I'm not still proficient with linux. Though there are descriptions of the processes, I'm not sure as to which I should REALLY turn off. System is slowing by the day. Net connection also seems slow on linux. Any reasons?

cranky · 23-03-2007, 08:29 PM

You may want to stop these services which you may not need, unless you are running any server:

>sendmail ----> if you are not running any mail server
>sshd ----> if you don't login to your PC remotely
>httpd or apache ---->if you are not running any web server
>mysqld ----> mysql database daemon
>samba -----> if you don't have any windows m/c in your network
>bind -----> if you are not running any nameserver

but you can start these services manually as and when required.

I had this problem of this constant hard disk activity, i use FC6, then found out it was the automatic system update program (yum-updatesd), it takes lot of time to search programs in my system that needs to be updated.... this may be your problem and you can disable it and manually update when required.

phreak0ut · 23-03-2007, 08:44 PM

Thanks for the quick reply

well, on my distro, I don't find the following services running:
Sendmail, samba and bind. I've also disabled cups, the printer daemon as I don't have a printer. Is it ok?

Sheik Rasheed K · 24-03-2007, 07:41 PM

Let me try mine. Zombie processes are child process of a parent, who have not waited for the child to teminate. Since the child termination is asynchronous event kernal keep the entry in the process table for the use of parent process. This will be removed automatically when the parent termintates.

cranky · 24-03-2007, 11:18 PM

Quote:

I've also disabled cups, the printer daemon as I don't have a printer. Is it ok?

AFAIK Its ok to disable cups if you don't have printer. You said there's constant HD activity, try running 'htop' or 'top' as eddie said and see which uses max CPU, but see if you really want that process to be running. Probably some scheduled task may be running (the cron, anacron tasks etc..) It happens every 6 days at a scheduled time in my fedora.

phreak0ut · 25-03-2007, 08:28 AM

^^Tried 'top', but I see a lot of processes running and doesn't make sense to me. Fortunately, there were 0 zombie processes. Dunno, what triggers mono. So, I think I need to keep a tab on these processes.

eddie · 25-03-2007, 03:28 PM

Mono is used by many things on openSUSE and ZMD is one of them. Anyways, keep top running (even though i recommend htop) and sort processes by CPU%. Now just keep it running and when ever you experience slowness in your system, look at "top" and see which process is taking maximum CPU. It would be mentioned as the first process in the list.

phreak0ut · 25-03-2007, 04:49 PM

Eddie, htop doesn't exist on this distro. So, I need to use only top command.

mehulved · 25-03-2007, 07:01 PM

Doesn't exist on this distro? Do you mean to say Suse uses some special techniques that all linux softwares don't exist on it?
It has 22,000 softwares of what?
Search in your repositories.

phreak0ut · 25-03-2007, 08:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tech_your_future

Doesn't exist on this distro? Do you mean to say Suse uses some special techniques that all linux softwares don't exist on it?
It has 22,000 softwares of what?
Search in your repositories.

Searched in yast, but of no avail

mehulved · 25-03-2007, 08:59 PM

I am sure you don't have proper repositories. Someone with suse can help you out. How can a program like htop not be there. And you seem to be missing quite a lot of other softwares, too, in the repository.
linux.wordpress.com had an article on repositories for Open Suse 10.2 search for it and use it.